Reaction to the film: The Corporation Nice job. I enjoyed reading your reaction. I noticed that you discussed compassion. Compassion is very important to the education field. Without compassion there is no hope.
Reaction to the article:Why bother? I'm not sure why I bothered to grade this... Very interesting point of view. Good job providing links and citing sources.
2 points
Completed
Reaction to the article:When the handouts keep coming, the food lines never end I have not thought about this problem in the way the author describes. I'm glad you shared this article. It would be a good one to debate with others.
managing social bookmarks with delicious One feature of Delicious you did not mention is that you can publicize your bookmarks and share them with others. This is great for collaborating or conducting research with a group. I look at the public bookmarks of a couple authors I follow.
2 points
Completed
Manage documents with Google docs Good job. I like the graphics.
I have enjoyed reading your projects for this course. I hope you have found it beneficial and learned a few tech tools along the way. I will send you an email with your current grade.
Reaction to the film: The Corporation
Feeding Frankenstein by:Cody Wirth
You may know the story of the frog and the scorpion. A scorpion wanted to cross a raging river, and asked a frog he saw to carry him on his back. The frog asked "How do I know that you won't sting and kill me as soon as you get on my back?" "Well," answered the scorpion, who was good with words when he wanted something, "then I wouldn't be able to get across the river." "Well," said the frog, "then how do I know that you won't sting and kill me as soon as we're across the river?" "Oh," said the scorpion, "because I'll be so grateful for the ride, why would I want to kill you then?"
This convinced the frog to let the scorpion on his back, and began swimming across the river. They were about a third of the way across the raging river, when, to his surprise, the frog felt a painful sting and looked around to see the scorpion pulling his stinger out of the frog's back. Immediately the frog felt himself becoming numb. Just before he was completely paralyzed, the frog had the breath to ask "Why?" "It's just my nature," said the scorpion, as they both sank into the river and drowned. "It's just my nature."(Author unknown)
Of course, the story was not about scorpions. It was about a warning against certain rare but dangerous kinds of people whose nature, like that of scorpions, is to destroy others even if it destroys them too.
The reason this is such a frightening story is because a person like the scorpion, a person who lacked even basic compassion, isn't quite human.
The most famous story like this is still Mary Shelly's 1818 tale of Dr. Frankenstein and the monster he created from spare human parts. For nearly two centuries, the Frankenstein monster has been a symbol of creating something inhuman, giving it life and power without a soul, then living to see it turn on him, as the monster even killed Frankenstein in the end.
However, there is a modern day horror story with the same principles and morals that everyone is subject to seeing and being apart of everyday. That horror story, is corporations.
One may ask what is a corporation? Well, according to the websters dictionary, a corporation is “an institution that is granted a charter recognizing it as a separate legal entity having its own privileges, and liabilities distinct from those of its members”. In other words, a corporation is it’s own person. Actually according to the 14th amendment a corporation has the same rights as any other U.S. citizen.
Seeing as how corporations have their own rights they can buy land, sell land, take loans out, sue others in court etc. But, seeing as how corporations are not a particular person, they have no souls to save and no bodys to incarcerate. You can not lock a corporation up if they do wrong, and they will not feel the guilt if they did something wrong. Corporations are a modern day monster that walks around destroying towns, cities, and lives.
What do corporations do that is so horrible you might ask? One of the many problems that they cause are environmental issues. One sharp example of environmental problems caused by multinational corporations, is the drive to extract oil from Nigeria. Corporations have even backed the military to harass, even kill, local people who continue to protest at the environmental and other problems the activities of the various oil companies have caused. Some local groups have become extreme themselves, kidnapping foreigners for example.
What happens to corporations when they are charged in court with things like these? They are usually just fined a few million dollars. What is a six million dollars in they eyes of multi billion dollar corporations like Wal-Marts; it is a penny on the ground, a slap on the wrist. It has been documented that at least once a week corporations like Wal-Mart, Shell Oil, IBM, etc., are charged for various things like, polluting the environment, trading with known enemies of the United States Government, and hazardous working conditions for workers.
Furthermore, we too are a contributing factor, just like corporations with our consumerism. We keep buying what corporations make, which greases the cog in the machine, and they just keep making money to live.
Just like Frankenstein became to powerful for his master, so have corporations became to powerful for the government to control.We need to stop feeding Frankenstein and find solutions to slaying the almighty corporation.
Reaction to going to a political event: Pro Life Rally
Seeing the World Through Political Eyes
by:Cody Wirth
It is always a great opportunity to go to a political affair. Whether you are pro or anti the issue, party, or leader, it gives yourself an advantage over others who share common beliefs like yourself. That advantage being that you have looked at that party, political figure, or whoever it may be, from both political spectacles. When you do this, it helps eliminate biased information you may have been force fed by our modern day media, and enables you to sort the fact from fiction and formulate your own opinion.
As I walked into the Aladdin Shrine center, I was not sure whether or not i was pro-choice. Now not being sure what you believe in may sound silly, but it is estimated according to abortionv.com, that nearly 10 percent of the American population are undecided on the matter.
As I walked in to the conference hall, I found my self very under dressed in my jeans and american eagle button up. I guess I did not get the memo on versace suites only.
The main speakers of the night were Chris Spielman and Sarah Palin . For those of you who do not know who they are, Chris Spielman was a professional football player. Sarah Palin of course, was John McCains running mate in the 2008 presidential election. Each of them carrying unique burdens on their shoulders. Each of them vulnerably sharing those unique stories with an audience of three thousand people that night.
Chris Spielman’s story was heart-wrenching. Just a few years earlier while he was in the NFL, his wife had come down with cancer. They beat the cancer and two years later his wife is pregnant. They are both happy, loving their lives, then one day his wife goes back to the hospital and discovers that the cancer had came back. They had the option to abort their child or stop the medication that was saving his wife’s life. They chose to save the life of the child. A year or so later, his wife had passed away, but the baby was alive and healthy.
Sarah Palin, a few years ago had found out she was pregnant. She went in for the ultra sound and finds out that their is a possibility that her child has down syndrome. The doctors recommended and abortion, but she decided that the only thing to do was to keep her child and raise it.
After hearing these heart felt stories all night long and hearing about how terrible abortion clinics were and why they were so abominable, I have decided that I am pro-life. I made this choice due to a combination of my own political beliefs and religious background. It was a great political adventure to experience. Going to the Pro-Life rally really opened my eyes to things that are actually problems in the world. Growing up in a small town and being in high-school are both factors that contribute to over looking what is happening around our world. Whenever given the opportunity to attend any political event, I highly recommend it.
After reading “When the Handouts Keep Coming, the Food Line Never Ends” by Mark WInne , your thoughts on how you perceive donation based organizations will change. In this article, the author examines what food banks are doing to cause the problem of hunger. Odd as it may seem, the supposed solution is one of the leading causes of the problem, but once examined, you can clearly see why food banks cause a never ending cycle of hunger. I too agree, that we have to find alternative solutions other than food banks to solve hunger in America.
Food banks are where those who are in need of food can come and receive nourishment that is contributed and made available to those in need. At first glance, this sounds great, but in reality these food banks are the catalyst in the hunger reaction.
One of the foremost reasons why food banks are problematic, is because of what is donated to them. Food banks are a system that depends on donated goods, which often times means that they are used as a waste-management tool. In the article Mark Winne recalls “I remember the load of nearly rotten potatoes that we "gratefully" accepted at the warehouse loading dock and then promptly shoveled into the dumpster once the donor was safely out of sight”. Most of the food donated to these food banks has to be thrown out because Americans donate out of necessity not out of their hearts.
Additionally, food banks are further complicated because as the author Mark Winne states “ The following week, it [food truck] returned at the same time, and once again the people were waiting. Only this time there were more of them. It may have been that a donor-recipient co-dependency had developed. Both parties were trapped in an ever-expanding web of immediate gratification that offered the recipients no long-term hope of eventually achieving independence and self-reliance”. When we keep giving to those who are below the poverty line, they never try to crawl out of the ditch that they have been placed into. Therefore, the number of donations required to sustain a nation of hungry people keep rapidly growing.
Food banks are a very powerful association.They assert this power by calling the attention of people of good will who want to address hunger. While donating food, and helping out in areas such as soup kitchens is not inherently wrong, it does “distract the public and policymakers from the task of harnessing the political will needed to end hunger in the United States”.
We know that fighting hunger with food is not the solution to the problem, so what is? Why are people hungry in the first place? Obviously because they can not afford food. We need to attack the root of the problem and not the fruit of the problem. Hunger is caused by poverty, so we can end hunger by solving the problem of poverty. Take “the number of volunteers in the state's other food banks and hundreds of emergency food sites and you would have enough people to dismantle the Connecticut state capitol brick by brick. Put all the emergency food volunteers and staff and board members from across the country on buses to Washington, to tell Congress to mandate a living wage, health care for all and adequate employment and child-care programs, and you would have a convoy that might stretch from New York City to our nation's capital.”
However, instead of doing this, the American people have just continued to travel down the road of recklessness and not solve the problem. Just “Like transportation planners who add more lanes to already clogged highways, we add more space to our food banks in the futile hope of relieving the congestion.”
We know that poverty is the cause of hunger. So why not fix it?
Reaction to the article: Why Bother?
Diseases of Modern America
By: Cody Wirth
In the article “Why Bother?”, the author Michael Pollan identifies that the most prominent problem that we as Americans face in the world today, is that we have absolutely no regard for how to find alternative solutions that will help save our environment. I too agree, that we, as not just a nation, but a world, need to start taking initiative to help save the environment.
“For us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of how we’re living our lives, suggests we’re not really serious about changing. Something our politicians cannot fail to notice. They will not move until we do.” We as a nation, united, have to take the first step up the stairway of going green. No amount of technology or quantity of legislation passed will save the world for us.
Then again, what will minute changes like changing our lightbulbs, growing a good portion of our own food, and walking to work do when, “halfway around the world there lives my evil twin, some carbon-footprint doppelgänger in Shanghai or Chongqing who has just bought his first car (Chinese car ownership is where ours was back in 1918), is eager to swallow every bite of meat I forswear and who’s positively itching to replace every last pound of CO2 I’m struggling no longer to emit. So what exactly would I have to show for all my trouble?” This is why the author Michael Pollan raises the question “why bother?” . Americans have been infected with the disease of not caring about the environment, but Americans need to be immunized with consideration for the environment. It is time for us to take the first step up the stairs of becoming truly green.
When you do bother, you set an example for other people around the world. “If enough other people bother, each one influencing yet another in a chain reaction of behavioral change, markets for all manner of green products and alternative technologies will prosper and expand.” This is exactly what happened with hybrid cars. When they first hit the market they did not explode like an atom bomb, they were looked down upon. Soon, the trend of buying them started to catch on.
If this happens, alertness about the environment will be raised, maybe even changed. The social trends and taboos might take an 180 turn and unroot themselves from society. No longer would the days of driving a gas guzzling hummer be cool, but biking to work would be. Nevermore would we be displaying light shows on our houses in the winter time, we would save the energy and cut our carbon foot prints.
However, one of the best and small minute changes that you can make to your life, to start a vast domino effect, is to start growing your own food. “You begin to see that growing even a little of your own food is, as Wendell Berry pointed out 30 years ago, one of those solutions that, instead of begetting a new set of problems the way “solutions” like ethanol or nuclear power inevitably do, actually beget other solutions, and not only of the kind that save carbon.” We can start making more solutions instead of multiplying our problems.
This article challenges us to bother about the environment, even if it means making atomic changes to our lives, that inevitably can start a domino effect. Michael Pollan does his part by growing his gardens, what do you do?
In todays fast paced world nobody has time to waste. Time is precious, so why waste it trying to find something on the internet that you want. Google readers uses RSS to make websites submit their new information to you. So instead of surfing the websites looking for updates and being disappointed when you do not find any, Google Reader will tell you when those websites update their content. Gone are the days of pointless web browsing! It will even give you a list of recommended sites, blogs etc. to follow based upon the ones that you already do. Say you follow a daily blog that gives you political cartoons, Google Reader will most likely put another blog, or site that gives daily cartoons to your recommended list. Google reader will work for just about anything; blogs,news, etc. It is a great way to get the information you want and save time by skipping the middle man.
Google Docs
The term non compatible no longer exists
The frustration of mac users and pc users alike is almost coming to an end. Gone are the days of files one may try to open being incompatible. With Google Docs you can now upload any type of file (yes i said any file) to the google docs server. Once your file is uploaded you can now share it with anyone in the whole entire world as long as they have a computer that has access to the internet. For instance, they could have a pc and you upload a ".pages" file and they can now read it! Google keeps bringing us one step closer to a universal file type. This is a great contribution to the world and is used by many people. However, though there a many pluses to this great contribution of the 21st century, there are some minuses. One of those being the file size limit. It is 500kb, which is very small. Hopefully Google ups this number soon. However, overall Google Docs is one of the many great tools available to us in this century of technological accomplishment.
Delicious
The clutter of bookmarks has disappeared
Delicious is a great tool for those millions of people who have hundreds of bookmarks that are disorganized and only on one computer. One may ask why Delicious helps with this problem? Delicious is a website that you can go to (once you have made an account) and save all of those websites that you want to come back to later. It is a great tool for the many people who use more than one computer a day, but still want to be able to have access to the wonderful sites they may come across. This is great for students, and teachers at schools who are constantly changing computers through out the day. For example, say a math teacher was at home and found 10 websites that they would want to show their class, they could save them to Delicious and then just pull Delicious up on their school computer and show the kids. Delicious also had an organization feature that lets you sort sites into any category you want. It is a very wonderful and helpful tool for those on the go.
Tweeting a Classic Novel
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 21st century length
As technology is increasing, so is the rate at which we intake information. No more searching all over the web for updates, the websites now tell you when they update. You no longer have to read a novel of a newspaper article, you can read the shortened version. In today's age, we as humans are very fast paced. We want our information now and we want it quick. One of the reasons sites like Twiitter and Facebook are so popular, is because they only allow you so many characters in a status update, or Tweet. Twitter allows you 140 characters to make a tweet. No one wants to read a two page tweet!
When information is shortened more people tend to read it. As I was searching the internet one day, I found a challenge online, where individuals were asked to read a classic novel, then in 140 characters or less, re-write it. "They say our attention spans are decreasing, what with all them Internets and Grand Theft Autos and rock ‘n’ roll. To hear grandma tell it, if we want anyone to take in the classics in the future, we’ll have to add guns and video montages and definitely cut everything down to a digestible radio edit. So, before they are lost to the ages, let’s rewrite all of the great works of literature, science, and philosophy to conform to our new Twitter-driven attention spans." So I too like many others accepted the challenge. I re-read the classic novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz So in 140 characters or less, here is my 21st take on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
by:Cody Wirth
Dorothy
Tornado swept to oz
No more Kansas Toto
Heisted ruby slippers
Emerald city 3 friends
Kill witch
Im Melting
Click heels 3x
Sweet Kansas
Nice job. I enjoyed reading your reaction. I noticed that you discussed compassion. Compassion is very important to the education field. Without compassion there is no hope.
This is a very sensitive issue. Good job.
I'm not sure why I bothered to grade this... Very interesting point of view. Good job providing links and citing sources.
I have not thought about this problem in the way the author describes. I'm glad you shared this article. It would be a good one to debate with others.
Do you use Google Reader every day? I do!
One feature of Delicious you did not mention is that you can publicize your bookmarks and share them with others. This is great for collaborating or conducting research with a group. I look at the public bookmarks of a couple authors I follow.
Good job. I like the graphics.
We must do more!
Awesome! I just read it to my kids!
Reaction to the film: The Corporation
Feeding Frankenstein
by:Cody Wirth
You may know the story of the frog and the scorpion. A scorpion wanted to cross a raging river, and asked a frog he saw to carry him on his back. The frog asked "How do I know that you won't sting and kill me as soon as you get on my back?" "Well," answered the scorpion, who was good with words when he wanted something, "then I wouldn't be able to get across the river." "Well," said the frog, "then how do I know that you won't sting and kill me as soon as we're across the river?" "Oh," said the scorpion, "because I'll be so grateful for the ride, why would I want to kill you then?"
This convinced the frog to let the scorpion on his back, and began swimming across the river. They were about a third of the way across the raging river, when, to his surprise, the frog felt a painful sting and looked around to see the scorpion pulling his stinger out of the frog's back. Immediately the frog felt himself becoming numb. Just before he was completely paralyzed, the frog had the breath to ask "Why?" "It's just my nature," said the scorpion, as they both sank into the river and drowned. "It's just my nature."(Author unknown)
Of course, the story was not about scorpions. It was about a warning against certain rare but dangerous kinds of people whose nature, like that of scorpions, is to destroy others even if it destroys them too.
The reason this is such a frightening story is because a person like the scorpion, a person who lacked even basic compassion, isn't quite human.
The most famous story like this is still Mary Shelly's 1818 tale of Dr. Frankenstein and the monster he created from spare human parts. For nearly two centuries, the Frankenstein monster has been a symbol of creating something inhuman, giving it life and power without a soul, then living to see it turn on him, as the monster even killed Frankenstein in the end.
However, there is a modern day horror story with the same principles and morals that everyone is subject to seeing and being apart of everyday. That horror story, is corporations.
One may ask what is a corporation? Well, according to the websters dictionary, a corporation is “an institution that is granted a charter recognizing it as a separate legal entity having its own privileges, and liabilities distinct from those of its members”. In other words, a corporation is it’s own person. Actually according to the 14th amendment a corporation has the same rights as any other U.S. citizen.
Seeing as how corporations have their own rights they can buy land, sell land, take loans out, sue others in court etc. But, seeing as how corporations are not a particular person, they have no souls to save and no bodys to incarcerate. You can not lock a corporation up if they do wrong, and they will not feel the guilt if they did something wrong. Corporations are a modern day monster that walks around destroying towns, cities, and lives.
What do corporations do that is so horrible you might ask? One of the many problems that they cause are environmental issues. One sharp example of environmental problems caused by multinational corporations, is the drive to extract oil from Nigeria. Corporations have even backed the military to harass, even kill, local people who continue to protest at the environmental and other problems the activities of the various oil companies have caused. Some local groups have become extreme themselves, kidnapping foreigners for example.
What happens to corporations when they are charged in court with things like these? They are usually just fined a few million dollars. What is a six million dollars in they eyes of multi billion dollar corporations like Wal-Marts; it is a penny on the ground, a slap on the wrist. It has been documented that at least once a week corporations like Wal-Mart, Shell Oil, IBM, etc., are charged for various things like, polluting the environment, trading with known enemies of the United States Government, and hazardous working conditions for workers.
Furthermore, we too are a contributing factor, just like corporations with our consumerism. We keep buying what corporations make, which greases the cog in the machine, and they just keep making money to live.
Just like Frankenstein became to powerful for his master, so have corporations became to powerful for the government to control.We need to stop feeding Frankenstein and find solutions to slaying the almighty corporation.
References:
http://allaboutfrogs.org/stories/scorpion.html-Author Unknown
The Corporation
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/corporation
Link to a video about corporations..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKnbo9Kg4ME
Reaction to going to a political event: Pro Life Rally
Seeing the World Through Political Eyes
by:Cody Wirth
It is always a great opportunity to go to a political affair. Whether you are pro or anti the issue, party, or leader, it gives yourself an advantage over others who share common beliefs like yourself. That advantage being that you have looked at that party, political figure, or whoever it may be, from both political spectacles. When you do this, it helps eliminate biased information you may have been force fed by our modern day media, and enables you to sort the fact from fiction and formulate your own opinion.
As I walked into the Aladdin Shrine center, I was not sure whether or not i was pro-choice. Now not being sure what you believe in may sound silly, but it is estimated according to abortionv.com, that nearly 10 percent of the American population are undecided on the matter.
As I walked in to the conference hall, I found my self very under dressed in my jeans and american eagle button up. I guess I did not get the memo on versace suites only.
The main speakers of the night were Chris Spielman and Sarah Palin . For those of you who do not know who they are, Chris Spielman was a professional football player. Sarah Palin of course, was John McCains running mate in the 2008 presidential election. Each of them carrying unique burdens on their shoulders. Each of them vulnerably sharing those unique stories with an audience of three thousand people that night.
Chris Spielman’s story was heart-wrenching. Just a few years earlier while he was in the NFL, his wife had come down with cancer. They beat the cancer and two years later his wife is pregnant. They are both happy, loving their lives, then one day his wife goes back to the hospital and discovers that the cancer had came back. They had the option to abort their child or stop the medication that was saving his wife’s life. They chose to save the life of the child. A year or so later, his wife had passed away, but the baby was alive and healthy.
Sarah Palin, a few years ago had found out she was pregnant. She went in for the ultra sound and finds out that their is a possibility that her child has down syndrome. The doctors recommended and abortion, but she decided that the only thing to do was to keep her child and raise it.
After hearing these heart felt stories all night long and hearing about how terrible abortion clinics were and why they were so abominable, I have decided that I am pro-life. I made this choice due to a combination of my own political beliefs and religious background.
It was a great political adventure to experience. Going to the Pro-Life rally really opened my eyes to things that are actually problems in the world. Growing up in a small town and being in high-school are both factors that contribute to over looking what is happening around our world. Whenever given the opportunity to attend any political event, I highly recommend it.
References:
http://abortiontv.com/
Sarah Palin at the Ohio Right to Life Rally- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-tySxoV4_I
Reaction to the article: When the Handouts Keep Coming, the Food Line Never Ends
A Never Ending Cycle of Hunger
By: Cody Wirth
After reading “When the Handouts Keep Coming, the Food Line Never Ends” by Mark WInne , your thoughts on how you perceive donation based organizations will change. In this article, the author examines what food banks are doing to cause the problem of hunger. Odd as it may seem, the supposed solution is one of the leading causes of the problem, but once examined, you can clearly see why food banks cause a never ending cycle of hunger. I too agree, that we have to find alternative solutions other than food banks to solve hunger in America.
Food banks are where those who are in need of food can come and receive nourishment that is contributed and made available to those in need. At first glance, this sounds great, but in reality these food banks are the catalyst in the hunger reaction.
One of the foremost reasons why food banks are problematic, is because of what is donated to them. Food banks are a system that depends on donated goods, which often times means that they are used as a waste-management tool. In the article Mark Winne recalls “I remember the load of nearly rotten potatoes that we "gratefully" accepted at the warehouse loading dock and then promptly shoveled into the dumpster once the donor was safely out of sight”. Most of the food donated to these food banks has to be thrown out because Americans donate out of necessity not out of their hearts.
Additionally, food banks are further complicated because as the author Mark Winne states “ The following week, it [food truck] returned at the same time, and once again the people were waiting. Only this time there were more of them. It may have been that a donor-recipient co-dependency had developed. Both parties were trapped in an ever-expanding web of immediate gratification that offered the recipients no long-term hope of eventually achieving independence and self-reliance”. When we keep giving to those who are below the poverty line, they never try to crawl out of the ditch that they have been placed into. Therefore, the number of donations required to sustain a nation of hungry people keep rapidly growing.
Food banks are a very powerful association.They assert this power by calling the attention of people of good will who want to address hunger. While donating food, and helping out in areas such as soup kitchens is not inherently wrong, it does “distract the public and policymakers from the task of harnessing the political will needed to end hunger in the United States”.
We know that fighting hunger with food is not the solution to the problem, so what is? Why are people hungry in the first place? Obviously because they can not afford food. We need to attack the root of the problem and not the fruit of the problem. Hunger is caused by poverty, so we can end hunger by solving the problem of poverty. Take “the number of volunteers in the state's other food banks and hundreds of emergency food sites and you would have enough people to dismantle the Connecticut state capitol brick by brick. Put all the emergency food volunteers and staff and board members from across the country on buses to Washington, to tell Congress to mandate a living wage, health care for all and adequate employment and child-care programs, and you would have a convoy that might stretch from New York City to our nation's capital.”
However, instead of doing this, the American people have just continued to travel down the road of recklessness and not solve the problem. Just “Like transportation planners who add more lanes to already clogged highways, we add more space to our food banks in the futile hope of relieving the congestion.”
We know that poverty is the cause of hunger. So why not fix it?
References: When the Handouts Keep Coming, the Food Line Never Ends-Mark WInne
Link to a video on Soup Kitchens-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPNWZ-u9lZw
Reaction to the article: Why Bother?
Diseases of Modern America
By: Cody Wirth
In the article “Why Bother?”, the author Michael Pollan identifies that the most prominent problem that we as Americans face in the world today, is that we have absolutely no regard for how to find alternative solutions that will help save our environment. I too agree, that we, as not just a nation, but a world, need to start taking initiative to help save the environment.
“For us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of how we’re living our lives, suggests we’re not really serious about changing. Something our politicians cannot fail to notice. They will not move until we do.” We as a nation, united, have to take the first step up the stairway of going green. No amount of technology or quantity of legislation passed will save the world for us.
Then again, what will minute changes like changing our lightbulbs, growing a good portion of our own food, and walking to work do when, “halfway around the world there lives my evil twin, some carbon-footprint doppelgänger in Shanghai or Chongqing who has just bought his first car (Chinese car ownership is where ours was back in 1918), is eager to swallow every bite of meat I forswear and who’s positively itching to replace every last pound of CO2 I’m struggling no longer to emit. So what exactly would I have to show for all my trouble?” This is why the author Michael Pollan raises the question “why bother?” . Americans have been infected with the disease of not caring about the environment, but Americans need to be immunized with consideration for the environment. It is time for us to take the first step up the stairs of becoming truly green.
When you do bother, you set an example for other people around the world. “If enough other people bother, each one influencing yet another in a chain reaction of behavioral change, markets for all manner of green products and alternative technologies will prosper and expand.” This is exactly what happened with hybrid cars. When they first hit the market they did not explode like an atom bomb, they were looked down upon. Soon, the trend of buying them started to catch on.
If this happens, alertness about the environment will be raised, maybe even changed. The social trends and taboos might take an 180 turn and unroot themselves from society. No longer would the days of driving a gas guzzling hummer be cool, but biking to work would be. Nevermore would we be displaying light shows on our houses in the winter time, we would save the energy and cut our carbon foot prints.
However, one of the best and small minute changes that you can make to your life, to start a vast domino effect, is to start growing your own food. “You begin to see that growing even a little of your own food is, as Wendell Berry pointed out 30 years ago, one of those solutions that, instead of begetting a new set of problems the way “solutions” like ethanol or nuclear power inevitably do, actually beget other solutions, and not only of the kind that save carbon.” We can start making more solutions instead of multiplying our problems.
This article challenges us to bother about the environment, even if it means making atomic changes to our lives, that inevitably can start a domino effect. Michael Pollan does his part by growing his gardens, what do you do?
References:
Why Bother? - Michael Pollan
Link to a video on going green-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgDJ_H-BzFo
Google Reader
The internet working for you
In todays fast paced world nobody has time to waste. Time is precious, so why waste it trying to find something on the internet that you want. Google readers uses RSS to make websites submit their new information to you. So instead of surfing the websites looking for updates and being disappointed when you do not find any, Google Reader will tell you when those websites update their content. Gone are the days of pointless web browsing! It will even give you a list of recommended sites, blogs etc. to follow based upon the ones that you already do. Say you follow a daily blog that gives you political cartoons, Google Reader will most likely put another blog, or site that gives daily cartoons to your recommended list. Google reader will work for just about anything; blogs,news, etc. It is a great way to get the information you want and save time by skipping the middle man.
Google Docs
The term non compatible no longer exists
The frustration of mac users and pc users alike is almost coming to an end. Gone are the days of files one may try to open being incompatible. With Google Docs you can now upload any type of file (yes i said any file) to the google docs server. Once your file is uploaded you can now share it with anyone in the whole entire world as long as they have a computer that has access to the internet. For instance, they could have a pc and you upload a ".pages" file and they can now read it! Google keeps bringing us one step closer to a universal file type. This is a great contribution to the world and is used by many people. However, though there a many pluses to this great contribution of the 21st century, there are some minuses. One of those being the file size limit. It is 500kb, which is very small. Hopefully Google ups this number soon. However, overall Google Docs is one of the many great tools available to us in this century of technological accomplishment.
Delicious
The clutter of bookmarks has disappeared
Delicious is a great tool for those millions of people who have hundreds of bookmarks that are disorganized and only on one computer. One may ask why Delicious helps with this problem? Delicious is a website that you can go to (once you have made an account) and save all of those websites that you want to come back to later. It is a great tool for the many people who use more than one computer a day, but still want to be able to have access to the wonderful sites they may come across. This is great for students, and teachers at schools who are constantly changing computers through out the day. For example, say a math teacher was at home and found 10 websites that they would want to show their class, they could save them to Delicious and then just pull Delicious up on their school computer and show the kids. Delicious also had an organization feature that lets you sort sites into any category you want. It is a very wonderful and helpful tool for those on the go.
Tweeting a Classic Novel
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 21st century length
As technology is increasing, so is the rate at which we intake information. No more searching all over the web for updates, the websites now tell you when they update. You no longer have to read a novel of a newspaper article, you can read the shortened version. In today's age, we as humans are very fast paced. We want our information now and we want it quick. One of the reasons sites like Twiitter and Facebook are so popular, is because they only allow you so many characters in a status update, or Tweet. Twitter allows you 140 characters to make a tweet. No one wants to read a two page tweet!
When information is shortened more people tend to read it. As I was searching the internet one day, I found a challenge online, where individuals were asked to read a classic novel, then in 140 characters or less, re-write it. "They say our attention spans are decreasing, what with all them Internets and Grand Theft Autos and rock ‘n’ roll. To hear grandma tell it, if we want anyone to take in the classics in the future, we’ll have to add guns and video montages and definitely cut everything down to a digestible radio edit. So, before they are lost to the ages, let’s rewrite all of the great works of literature, science, and philosophy to conform to our new Twitter-driven attention spans." So I too like many others accepted the challenge. I re-read the classic novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz So in 140 characters or less, here is my 21st take on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
by:Cody Wirth
Dorothy
Tornado swept to oz
No more Kansas Toto
Heisted ruby slippers
Emerald city 3 friends
Kill witch
Im Melting
Click heels 3x
Sweet Kansas